Why Roberts Why?

That must be the question conservatives are asking themselves today. After all, the prevailing wisdom (one I signed onto) was that this was a 5-4 decision one way or the other, with Kennedy holding the swing vote. Now, I thought maybe if Justice Kennedy bit, Roberts might come along -- both to keep the decision from being yet another 5-4 ruling and to keep the opinion for himself. But Justice Kennedy voted to strike down the ACA -- indeed, by signing on to a far-right joint dissent for himself, Alito, Scalia, and Thomas, it indicates that it wasn't even a close call for the usually swingy justice. Which means that it was Chief Justice Roberts serving as the middle vote. So what prompted him to (switch his?) vote to uphold President Obama's signature law?

I have two potential explanations floating around right now. The first is legalistic. Chief Justice Roberts has always been a big government conservative. In fact, that's why he was appointed to the Court in the first place -- President Bush wanted someone he could count on to affirm his vast expansions of executive power in the War on Terror. One of the ways I teach my students that judges can exercise some independence from politics is that the political motivations which put them on the Court may not turn out to track the same sets of concerns as their careers progress. The classic example is Justice Frankfurter. Frankfurter was appointed to the Court as a fierce advocate of judicial restraint, which, with the Four Horsemen running roughshod over any and all state and federal economic regulation, was a defining progressive value at the time. And Frankfurter did turn out to be a reliable vote to uphold the New Deal. But as his career continued, the defining controversies for the Supreme Court started to become civil and criminal rights cases. And there, Frankfurter's deference to legislatures led to a far more conservative voting record. I'm not saying Chief Justice Roberts always is going to vote in favor of enhanced government power, only that the particular ideological profile he cuts -- the one that put him on the bench in the first place -- might have made him more sympathetic to the ACA than one might expect from a run-of-the-mill conservative judge.

Second, there are institutionalist concerns that may well have played a role. When he was first appointed Chief Justice, Roberts made clear that he wanted a more unified, less ideologically polarized Court. Whatever else one thinks of his tenure, it is clear that in that respect his has been a colossal failure. The Roberts Court has been bitterly fractured along partisan lines, and more and more (particularly with Citizens United) has been gaining a reputation as an ideologically conservative activist court. It's not that liberals are suddenly going to start singing the praises of the Roberts Court, but had the ACA been struck down, that train would have left the station for good. Basically, Chief Justice Roberts saw in this case that a vote to strike down the ACA was a vote to permanently remake his Court's image into one adjunct to the Republican Party. And he blinked.

ACA Upheld!

What, you didn't hear? (Oh, by the way, the Stolen Valor Act was struck down too).

Now, I haven't read the opinions yet. But it's not like that's stopping anyone else from opining. And I know the basics: The 4 liberal justices vote to uphold on commerce clause grounds, Alito, Thomas, Scalia, and Kennedy vote to strike down the entire law, and Roberts votes to uphold the law as an exercise of the tax power (there's a minor hiccup regarding how medicare funding is allocated that I'll ignore for now). Scattered thoughts below:

* I agree that the dissent's simultaneous assertions that the whole of the ACA must be struck down because the mandate and funding conditions are unconstitutional, and that the mandate is not "necessary and proper" to Congress commerce clause authority, are completely inconsistent with each other.

* I also agree that Justice Ginsburg repeatedly citing Justice Scalia's Raich opinion is a thing of beauty.

* Revenge of the tax power! That was the issue that everyone kind of forgot was an issue, even though that's really what the mandate most closely simulates. I don't know enough about tax law to understand why it isn't a tax for the purposes of the Anti-Injunction Act, though.

* Conservatives might claim a minor victory in that the opinion may further cabin the commerce clause power a bit, but ultimately I don't think that changes that much.

* People who say they're moving to Canada after this really need to rethink their strategy.

* UPDATE: I separately give my thoughts on why Chief Justice Roberts voted the way he did.

Anti-Semites Lose in New York

Well, it looks like a lot of worrying was for naught. The semi-credible attempts of two anti-Semitic nuts to make it to New York's congressional ended tonight, both by sizable margins. With 69% reporting, Hakeem Jeffries is blowing out Charles Barron 74.5/25.5 in NY-8 Democratic primary. Jim Russell did a little better in the NY-17 Republican primary, but only reached 35% against Joe Carvin (94% reporting).

Jeffries crushing victory over Barron ratifies something we should have already known: Black voters can indeed be trusted to hear the concerns of their Jewish colleagues, and are not swayed by racialized and anti-Semitic appeals. The belief that Blacks are more prone to conspiracy theories and other harbingers of extremism has never been true, and this is just one more data point for that.

Of course, fringe candidates can sometimes gain more traction than they should -- in both parties (as Russell demonstrates further upstate). But for whatever reason, there is a mythology that Black voters are more prone to this sort of nuttery. And it's just not true. It's consistently not true, and they're proving it time and again.

New York Primaries: Home of the Anti-Semite?

Daily Kos Elections has a good rundown of today's primary races (in New York, Colorado, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, and Utah). Most notable (and disturbing) is the possibility that not one but two raging bigots could score major party nominations in New York house races.

We've already talked about David Duke-endorsed Charles Barron in NY-08, where he's running to replace retiring Rep. Ed Towns (D). State Assm. Hakeem Jeffries is the establishment choice here and has vastly outraised Barron, but Barron has scored a few union endorsements as well as that of Towns (who was unhappy at lackluster establishment support for him back when Jeffries was mounting a primary challenge to him). I've seen no polling on the race, but there are reports that New York Dems are "panicking" about a potential Barron victory. Even if Barron does pull off the upset, though, it isn't over -- Jeffries is also on the Working Families Party line and will thus be on the general election ballot regardless.

Meanwhile, over in the NY-17, two Republicans are looking to challenge Rep. Nita Lowey (D). The establishment choice is hedge fund manager and Rye town supervisor Joe Carvin. But he's facing a surprisingly stern test from White supremacist and anti-Semite Jim Russell, who scored 38% of the vote when he was the Republican nominee for this seat in 2010 (despite official GOP disavowals of his candidacy after his racist views became known). With relatively high name recognition from his previous run, Republicans too are a bit nervous about what election night might bring.

Oh, the Empire State. What will you bring us next?

UPDATE: This is a stellar short profile piece on Barron, explaining where he gets his support. It's a mix of an old core of 60s-style pan-African radicals (who love that he does things like speak out in favor of Mugabe), coupled with an indefatigable focus on local issues -- combating drug gangs, cleaning up neighborhoods, attending local labor protests -- that has made him a respected figured amongst his constituents who couldn't care less about international pan-African liberation.

Lots of radicals with global visions flameout because they don't actually care about the community's they purport to represent. Barron appears to have enough energy to keep an eye on both prizes, and together it makes for a potent and dangerous combination.

Iraq Cuts Arts Ties to the US over Jewish Artifacts

America's refusal to turn over Jewish artifacts recovered from Iraqi archives has caused that country to cut archaeological cooperation with the United States. I wrote about the dispute in more detail here, but basically there are three major elements:

First, the possibility that Jewish artifacts in Iraq won't be safe due to anti-Semitic pressure in Iraq. Second, the possibility that preserving and displaying such artifacts in Iraq will play an important role in humanizing Jews to Iraqis and reminding Iraqis of the long and vibrant Jewish history there prior to their effective expulsion in the wake of Israel's Independence. And third, the interests of the Iraqi Jewish community itself, many of whom live in Israel and thus would likely not be able to access their own history if it was hosted in Iraq (which refuses to admit Jewish visitors).

Late is Not Never: JFed Cancels Anti-Muslim and Anti-Semitic Speaker

I saw the other day (while I was traveling to Chicago) that the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles was hosting a speech by notorious bigot Pamela Geller (sponsored by the Zionist Organization of America, which I'll return to in a moment). Geller's rabid hatred of Muslims has been noted by groups ranging from the Anti-Defamation League to the Southern Poverty Law Center. But beyond her hatred of all Muslims, Geller is also equally incensed by most Jews ("liberal Jews", which is another way of saying "most Jews"). She refers to us as "kapos" and "Nazis" who yearn for Israel's destruction and the genocide of Jews. She is a repulsive speaker and it was shocking to see her gaining a platform at a mainstream (albeit regional) Jewish organization.

Well, say goodbye to the platform. Little Green Footballs has informed us that the federation has canceled her speech (to Geller's spit-flecked rage). This is a victory for decency, yes, humanity, yes, religious equality, yes, and also the Jewish people -- not just because it shames the holy name to associate ourselves with such hate, but because Geller hates most Jews too. She is nothing more than a disgrace.

I haven't seen a statement from the LA Jewish Federation on their decision yet. I did visit their contact page to drop a note thanking them on making the right call, which I encourage you to do as well (you can also tweet them @JFedLA). The event was scheduled for today, and almost all the outraged coverage occurred yesterday, so this was very fast motion by the organization.

Meanwhile, let's talk about ZOA again. They weren't involved in the cancellation -- Geller thanks them for finding an alternate venue after the JFed cancellation -- and they were the one's who sponsored the event in the first place. ZOA, of course, has already revealed itself as an anti-Israel organization with its push for a one-state solution (which needless to say Geller supports), and its support of anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic speakers alike is nothing new. But -- if only by age alone -- they maintain some clout in the Jewish community. It is an excellent thing that the LA JFed stood up to them, and their endorsement of Geller should render them as far beyond the pale of Jewish communal life as any other extremist, racist group.

UPDATE: Here is ZOA's statement on the cancellation. They pointedly do not blame "security threats" but rather acknowledge it was political pressure (they say by extremist Jewish and Muslim groups -- because we all know how beholden Jewish Federations are to JVP!) that caused the federation to back down. So more kudos to the Jewish Federation, and tally up another instance of ZOA being a disgrace to Jews and pro-Israeli Americans alike.

UPDATE x2: I've read accounts -- unconfirmed, but it seems plausible -- that the Jewish Federation did not invite Geller to speak. Rather, it was ZOA's doing, and they just reserved space at the Federation, which they could do since they were a member of a group. Once the Federation was informed of the nature of who was speaking, they cancelled the event.

Now, it's implausible that they weren't aware that Geller was coming -- the event was announced on their webpage, after all -- but it is possible that they did not know who she was beyond ZOA's white-washed biography. In any event, that would be much better than the alternative -- that the Federation knowingly was going to have someone like Geller speak, but caved under pressure.

UPDATE x3: JTA picks up the story. They weren't able to get a comment from the Jewish Federation prior to press time though.

Blankenhorn Defects on Gay Marriage

Over the past decade, polling on same-sex marriage has seen a dramatic swing. Once a marginal, even fringe position, support for gay marriage has become a mainstream, perhaps even a majority position, The most recent poll I've seen has a plurality in favor (42/40), and I have little doubt that given another few years, support for marriage equality will consistently be the majority position.

Implicit in that shift is that people who used to oppose gay marriage now support it. Many of those are, of course, ordinary citizens who have realized that marriage equality is just the latest permutation of the American credo demanding equal dignity, rights, and respect for all. Some are high profile political and social figures whose shifts have made major headlines (ranging from Barack Obama to Colin Powell to Bill Clinton).

But the announcement by David Blankenhorn (H/T: Dale Carpenter) that he now supports gay marriage may be, in a sense, bigger than all of these. Blankenhorn, obviously, does not have the profile of the President of the United States. But Blankenhorn's career as a public intellectual has been as one of the most prominent opponents of the same-sex marriage. He represents possibly the highest profile defector from that position to the side of equality.

Blankenhorn's reasons for his shift are interesting. He does not recant his belief that there is a positive good in children being raised by their biological parents. But he acknowledges that outside a few lonely voices writing newspaper editorials, the campaign against same-sex marriage has not been characterized by concerns about parenting, but about dehumanizing gays and lesbians. And perhaps even more importantly, from his vantage point, opposing gay marriage has had no discernible impact on any of the tangible ways Blankenhorn had hoped it would strengthen the institution of marriage as whole. His belief that stopping gay marriage would strengthen marriage has been falsified, and so he no longer holds the belief. That is an all-too-rare case of intellectual integrity, and it is worth applauding.

In essence, Blankenhorn now concedes that whatever trivial impacts opposing gay marriage has on strengthening heterosexual marriage (and he, like I, am unconvinced these impacts are real), they are vastly outweighed by the enduring dignitary and de jure harm such bars place upon gays and lesbians. He's right, and his transition represents the crumbling of credible intellectual opposition to the project of gay equality. It's just not that complicated.

Charles Barron Endorsed By David Duke

The Democratic primary to succeed retiring Rep. Ed Towns (D-NY) has gotten even more bizarre, with former KKK Grand Wizard and White supremacist David Duke endorsing pan-African extremist Charles Barron. Barron, notorious for his embrace of folks like Muammar Gaddafi and his loathing of Israel (among other things), is facing off against Hakeem Jeffries. Democratic leaders are panicking a bit as Barron, a longtime New York City councilman, has apparently gained some traction (including an endorsement from Towns as a final "fuck you" to the local and national Democratic establishment).

“The possible election of a dedicated anti-Zionist to the U.S. Congress has thrown the Zionist influenced media and the Zio-political establishment in a tizzy,” Duke says. “The Jewish-controlled New York media is now calling Barron the, quote, ‘David Duke of New York,’ unquote. I’ve been deluged by media inquiries as to whether I would endorse Barron because of his very strong anti-Zionist and anti-Israel positions.”

“In a race for Congress between an anti-Zionist black activist and a black activist who is a bought and paid for Zionist Uncle Tom, I’ll take the anti-Zionist any day,” Duke explains — the "Zionist Uncle Tom" being Barron's opponent Hakeem Jeffries, the establishment favorite.

I have to think being called an "Uncle Tom" by David Duke must be the highlight of any Black politician's career.

Radley Balko joked on twitter that "It's a new morning in America when a white supremacist and a black nationaist can join hands in a shared hatred of Jews." Which I retweeted, because it's hilarious, but actually this sort of alliance is not all that new -- Black nationalists have been forging bonds with White supremacists dating back to at least Marcus Garvey, and one of the commonalities Garvey shared with White supremacists was mutual loathing of Jews.

Of course, part of what brought Garvey down was his ties to the KKK, which rendered him beyond the pale for nearly all Blacks. And one cannot imagine that a David Duke endorsement is helpful in this majority-Black district no matter how crazy things get.

Hold It

Wait ... are you telling me that sometimes, when a cargo ship is potentially smuggling arms to a murderous armed faction, that a civilized nation might contemplate using military forces to board it? Headline from the Telegraph:

Syria: David Cameron considered ordering special forces to seize Russian ship

David Cameron considered ordering British special forces to board and impound a Russian ship suspected of carrying arms to Syria, it has emerged.

No. No, no no no no. Such things are always, always, inherently illegal. Or worst, Zionist. I just can't fathom that anyone, anywhere, would even contemplate such an outrageous breach of human decorum.

Midweek Roundup

Going to Chicago next weekend, Minnesota next week. Lot's of good stuff on my browser, which I don't have as much to say on as I should.

* * *

Bill Donohue of the Catholic League issues a warning: "Jews had better not make enemies of their Catholic friends, since there are so few of them." He attributed the comment to former NYC mayor Ed Koch, but Koch denies saying it.

Arizona SoS, already under fire for being birther-curious, gives the conspiracy a new spin -- Obama was born in Hawaii but lied about being born in Kenya to get into college.

Kieran Healy gives a satirical statement from UVA's Board of Visitors.

The National Review bringing aboard unrepentant racist David Yerushalmi prompts Ta-Nehisi Coates to write two great posts on "politically correct conservatism", where the most offensive thing you can say is that anyone, anywhere is a bigot -- even someone who wants to criminalize being a Muslim with a 20 year prison sentence.

Interesting study on how the triumphs and failures of male and female Olympic athletes are described by commentators.

The Spy Who Loved Me

One of Israel's shining achievements is its relatively egalitarian treatment of gays and lesbians, not just compared to its neighbors but compared to any other country in the world. Among other things, Israel allowed gays and lesbians to serve openly in the IDF well before the US repealed "Don't Ask Don't Tell" (as ex-Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) argued, this must have been because Israel lacks "Judeo-Christian values").

But National Union MK Uri Ariel, unwilling to allow Israel to have any amount of a good thing, has urged Israel stop letting gays serve in the army. To be fair, Ariel is a fringe player (National Union is a small, far-right party too extreme even for Netanyahu's right-wing coalition). And Ariel himself has admitted to serving as a spy for militant settlers as they worked to disrupt IDF activity, making him at best a weak source of credible information about what benefits Israel's security or the IDF (at worst, it makes him a traitor).

Alice Walker Says No Hebrew Translation of "The Color Purple"

As part of her general boycott of Israel, Alice Walker is refusing to allow her novel "The Color Purple" to be translated into Hebrew (the article sounds like her objection is to the Hebrew language, not the publishing house, though it's a little unclear). Though if it is literally just a problem with the language that Jews and Israelis speak, then I think we've found a topper to this includes any reference to their wildlife.

In all seriousness, Alice Walker's problems with anti-Semitism -- going well beyond "criticizing Israel" -- are nothing new. I mean, even Michael Lerner regretted invited her to speak, saying she was offensive and put-downish towards the Jewish people as a whole. Lerner's note that Walker was utterly dismissive of Jewish history accords with my own reading of her, and is doubly ironic given her prior arrogant assertion that "Jews who know their own history" agree with her.

But this does demonstrate with renewed vividness the connection between Walker's famous sentiment ("No one is your friend who demands your silence"), and her later remark regarding Israel that "when a country primarily instills fear in the minds and hearts of the people of the world, it is no longer useful in joining the dialogue we need for saving the planet." Walker, of course, feels that Israel is primarily fear-inducing to "the people of the world" (most Jews excluded, naturally), and so she would rather not engage in discourse with them -- preferring them to be silenced as others determine their fate.

Alice Walker is no friend of Jews. There's nothing new to that statement, but it bears repeating. It's tragic when someone looked up to by so many turns so viciously, but it can't be ignored.

Atzmon-esque Islamophobia

Gilad Atzmon is a fringe anti-Semitic thinker, who spends much of his time savaging Jews for alleged schemes of world-domination and racist parochialism. For the most part, he owns this identity (calling himself, among other things, a "proud self-hating Jew"), but occasionally he tries to kick up some dust around it. One way he does this is by saying that when he attacks "Jewishness", he isn't referring to all Jews per se but rather a style of thinking or behavior that is wrong or immoral, which may be done by Jews or non-Jews (so, for example, he might say George W. Bush is behaving Jewishly). It's not a good faith argument (Atzmon's argument is more or less far-right hyper-colorblindness and his definition of "Jewishness" is anyone who maintains any sort of group identity. But he doesn't apply this "standard" universally, only to persons he dislikes), but even taken on its face it'd still be anti-Semitic -- using "Jew" as a pejorative is inherently hostile to that group "even if" one means to encompass non-Jews under its ambit (compare calling someone a "Jew" because they're allegedly cheap).

It's no shock to anyone that Robert Spencer is a racist bigot against Muslims. But his latest column might as well be taken from the Gilad Atzmon playbook, asking whether New York mayor Michael Bloomberg "is secretly a Muslim". Now, Spencer agrees that obviously Bloomberg isn't literally a Muslim. But, he says, by taking authoritarian actions (Spencer is referring to the big soda ban, rather than something like, I don't know, barring minority religious practices), he's basically "acting" Muslim. "Muslim" is a referent not to Muslims, necessarily, but to a class of behavior that Spencer finds distasteful (which he imputes to the vast majority of all Muslims but also to basically anyone else he disagrees with). That behavior is then transmuted into a sort of totalitarian impulse that desires to squelch liberty and dominate the world. So it's basically Gilad Atzmon with a new label. He can't even distinguish himself based on target profile -- after all, Spencer's targeting Jews too (who -- though probably not supporting soda bans -- tend towards the sort of liberalism that Spencer has painted a target over).

This isn't really all that surprising -- bromides about haters being haters aside, polling indicates that the best predictor of anti-Muslim sentiment is anti-Jewish sentiment. Spencer is just another practitioner of far-right hatred that, while casting itself as Islamophobic, really has its sights on essentially any minority group.

Africans Who Want To Convert Rejected by Israel

I've been ambivalent about Israel's policy towards African migrants. I have a general belief in relatively liberal immigration policies, at least for the United States. At the same time, most countries aren't the United States (for example, they're much smaller). Certainly, while humane treatment of immigrants is an absolute must, I don't view rejecting an open border policy as a per se human rights violation.

But another facet of Israel's existence is as a haven for Jews -- Jews, of course, have a "right of return" to Israel regardless of where they're from. So what about African migrants who wish to convert to Judaism? Ha'aretz is reporting that Israel's conversion committee has rejected every single one of those applications was rejected ("Of course, all the requests were rejected," is how the Prime Minister's Office put it).

This is deeply upsetting. Israeli society has long had a problem with racism directed towards its African community (including African Jews), so in a sense it is unsurprising that it is erecting a per se bar to African conversions. Still, it strikes very close to the heart of the very function of the Jewish state, and the way in which the "Jewish" part has been captured by regressive, ultra-orthodox forces who view any Jew that isn't under their thumb as a threat.

Now. the claim here is that these migrants are seeking to convert in bad faith, simply to gain citizenship in Israel. This doesn't move me, for at least three reasons. First: All of them? Every last one? 100% is a figure that one rarely reaches via dispassionate evaluation; it's the province of banana republic "elections" and Ron Paul newsletters. That "of course" all of them were rejected is heavy evidence that the bad faith came from the government's conversion committee, not each and every applicant. Second, conversion to Judaism isn't exactly a walk in the park. It's a difficult, grinding process -- quite capable of forcing people to prove their commitment to the faith. In fact, that's the entire design of it. So if someone wants to go through conversion, I say you start him or her down the process and see where it leads. Bad faith will reveal itself soon enough.

But perhaps most importantly -- what is the "bad faith" here? A bunch of people saw a Jewish society, saw that it functioned well, saw that it produced opportunities they lacked elsewhere, saw that it operated in a way they viewed as promising such that they wanted to stay a part of that community -- how is that not the epitome of what we want in a convert? Is keeping strict kosher part of what is driving them? Admittedly doubtful, but then I don't do that either, so I can hardly view it is an essential part of a genuine design to join the Jewish community. As far as I'm concerned, the desire to live in Israel as a Jew is almost self-referentially proof of a good-faith desire to become a Jew. The Israeli government should have treated it as such.

In any event, it would be interesting to see what would happen if some Orthodox Rabbis traveled with these deportees back to their countries of origins and tried to set up a formal, full-length Orthodox conversion process. Outside the direct control of the Israeli government, it would be far harder to deny them re-entry if they come back as Jews.

But It's a Proud, Family-Owned Brothel

PPP: Sixty-six percent of Nevada Republicans support legalized brothels (same percentage as Democrats), but only 20% of them support same-sex marriage. Now that's some family values!

Obama Lets Them Work

In a bold new pronouncement, President Obama has decided to stop deporting most illegal immigrants who came to the US as children, don't pose a criminal or security threat, and either did well in school or served in the military. In other words, people who already are for all intents and purposes not just Americans, but Americans we're lucky to have.

Republicans were predictably outraged ("predictable" both because they substantively oppose immigration reform and because they're outraged at anything Obama does). Haley Barbour did warn his party-mates not "demonize" illegal immigrants, which likely means Haley Barbour is about to be bitterly disappointed.

We should be clear: This does not replace the necessity of the DREAM Act (it doesn't provide a path to citizenship, merely work permits), but it is a good first step at both humane treatment of these persons, and for strengthening America via their contributions to our society.

If Only Jews Were Dumber....

This year's Jennifer Rubin award for conservative Jews who hate American Jews goes to ... Barry Rubin! It's a Rubin-to-Rubin handoff!

Like Jennifer, Barry Rubin is trying to answer the vexing question as to why Jews support liberals like Barack Obama. His consternation over the question is in inverse correlation to its difficulty: Simply put, Jews are liberal. Take a voting bloc that's 90% pro-choice, 70% pro-gay marriage, 60% pro-union, and 66% in favor of tax hikes on the rich, (not to mention strong supporters of a two-state solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict -- unlike the Republican Party) and yeah -- tough nut for Republicans to crack.

But Rubin eschews the obvious "liberals prefer liberals" analysis in favor of basically saying Jews are a bunch of dupes

Propaganda: As highly educated and literate people, Jews are more heavily impacted by schools, universities, and mass media that are engaged in indoctrination or highly concerted efforts to campaign for Obama and his ideas. By the same token, Jews as a whole tend to give higher credibility to the fairness of media and academia.

Camouflage: The concealment of Obama’s radicalism and that of those supporting his ideology as supposed liberals plays into Jewish reverence for liberalism.

Obama’s persona: While the notion of Obama as a “Jewish president” is absurd, its appeal to some does in fact have a material basis. His image as an apparently highly educated, supposedly intellectual, superficially sophisticated, cosmopolitan personality fits with majority Jewish preferences.

Jews like superficial sophistication and faux-intellectualism (and weirdly are willing to view someone with a Harvard law degree as "highly educated"). But if only we weren't so literate and educated, we'd be less prone to base our opinions on suspect sources like "media" or "academia", instead favoring more credible ones like Barry Rubin, Glenn Beck, or the semi-literate ravings of local talk radio hosts.

You know your argument is in trouble when it basically boils down "the problem is Jews aren't dumb enough to dislike Obama."

(Rubin also talks a bit about Jews' relationship with race and racial issues. It's pretty garbled -- boiling down to "Jews have a compulsion to appear anti-racist" -- and not all that helpful. For a better discussion, read Eric Goldberg's The Price of Whiteness, reviewed by me here).

Quote of the Year

Sally Quinn's essay blaming the fall of bipartisanship on the lack of DC dinner parties (with a healthy dose of damn kids these days) is being roundly mocked by just about anyone. But Jon Chait takes the cake when he digs up a gem of what Quinn considered to be the good old days:

Washington writer Sally Quinn told of a 1950s reception where: “My mother and I headed for the buffet table. As we were reaching for the shrimp, both of us jumped and let out a shriek. Senator Strom Thurmond, grinning from ear to ear, had one hand on my behind and the other on my mother’s. As I recall, we were both quite flattered, and thought it terribly funny and wicked of Ol’ Strom.”

To which Chait sums up:

Once Washington was a happy place where a girl and her mother could be groped simultaneously in good fun by a white supremacist. Sadly, it has all been ruined by Kim Kardashian and Ezra Klein.

Bang.

And Yet Somehow They'll Survive

Wesleyan University has made some waves by announcing it is abandoning need-blind admission. In effect, this means it will give some amount of preference towards wealthier applicants (how much is probably indeterminate). In other words, affirmative action for rich kids.

Now a lot of you will be up in arms about how unfair this is to students of lower socio-economic backgrounds. But I think we need to look to another set of victims: the wealthy students themselves. As beneficiaries of affirmative action, we have to ask -- are they mismatched above their level? Does giving them special preferences stigmatize them, creating the soft bigotry of low expectations? I mean, even wealthy students who could get in without the "boost" are tainted by the policy -- everyone will be left wondering if they got in on the strength of their merit or their bank account.

These are the questions precisely no one will be asking, because the students are not racial minorities and thus there is no need to concern-troll about them. But since I'm guessing that, given the resources and knowledge base available to these applicants, they don't see attending Wesleyan as an exercise in self-sabotage -- well, maybe it isn't so bad for other people who benefit from affirmative action but aren't already advantaged?

Defending a Racist: The Drinking Game

You ever had a conversation with someone hell-bent on defending a racist (him/herself or someone else)? There are some predictable moves they'll make -- and by "predictable" I mean "virtually all of these conversations could track my anti-discrimination syllabus class-for-class". So I figured, if I'm going to be driven to suicide by these idiots, I may as well go down via drinking game. But let's be clear -- actually playing this game? Will kill you. Nobody's tolerance is high enough.

That said -- here are the rules! Note that I'm using "Black" as my stand-in minority group, but you can substitute pretty freely (Jews, gays, Latinos -- try it, it's fun!). And feel free to add your own rules in the comments.

* * *

"I don't have a prejudiced bone in my body." (1 sip)

"I asked him and he said he wasn't racist." (2 sips. But if he says "let's ask him and see if he admits he's racist," replace alcohol with juice because he's too naive to be older than 11 and you're in for a long night)

"I think he's really brave to even ask these questions." (1 sip)

"Oh there you go, playing the 'race card'" (1 sip, 3 sips if you haven't actually called the person racist yet, 5 sips if you haven't even spoken yet)

"So I guess anytime someone criticizes a Black man, it's 'racist'?" (1 sip)

"CRITICIZING AFFIRMATIVE ACTION IS NOT RACIST." (1 sip, 3 sips if nobody's arguing that all such criticisms -- as opposed to this particular criticism -- are. Which is to say, 3 sips).

"I'm not saying I agree with everything he says, but he makes some astute points" (1 sip to start, 2 sips if he won't say which things he disagrees with, 3 sips if he won't say which parts he agrees with, and down the bottle if the "astute point" is "Blacks were better off enslaved"/"Jews do run the world"/"gays are basically an armada of child molesters")

"But I have Black friends/family!" (1 sip) "...and they agree with me!" (another sip)

"Not every Black person agrees with you!" (1 sip)

"You're the real racist...." (1 sip)

".... for thinking about race so much" (1 sip)
".... for even thinking race is a thing" (1 sip)
".... for holding yourself out as different. Why do you think you're better than the rest of us, huh?" (down the bottle)

"You're just afraid of hard truths. Stop being so PC!" (2 sips)

"I'm just asking questions okay? Stop being so defensive!" (1 sip) ".... do you have something to hide?" (another sip)

"Oh, so I need a lifetime of study before I opine about your group?" (2 sips, but down the bottle if it would have taken less than an hour of "study" to know what was said was idiotic).

"It is true! I know because ..."

"... I read it on the internet" (1 sip)
"... my Black friend said so." (1 sip)
"... well, everyone knows that it's true." (3 sips)
[multiply drinks x2 if what's "true" is a well-known urban legend/conspiracy theory; x3 if upon being informed of that the response is "sure, that's what the Mossad wants you to think."]

"TRUE OR FALSE: THERE ARE BLACK PEOPLE WHO HAVE DONE BAD THINGS!" (1 sip)

"Who made you the knowledge/PC police? What makes you so sure you know what you're talking about" (1 sip if you're a member of the group under attack, and/or 1 sip if you actually do have an academic or professional specialty in the topic under discussion).

"I'm not saying racism is okay, but I understand it given that Black people do [whatever]." (1 sip)

"I don't have a problem with Black people. I have a problem with ...." (1 sip, but brace yourself)

"... their music, clothing, and culture." (1 sip)
"... the 80% of them who disagree with me." (2 sips)
"... institutions populated primarily by Black people." (3 sips)
"... the uppity ones." (down the bottle)

UPDATE

Some more:

"All I'm saying is how about a White History Month for a change?" (1 sip -- thanks Bill)

"You see racists behind every bush." (1 sip, add another if they accuse you of it being a hobby)

"Louis Farrakhan exists. Therefore...." (1 sip)

".... until you condemn him to my satisfaction, shut up." (2 sips)
".... racism is totally justified." (2 sips)
".... anybody who talks about racism is Louis Farrakhan" (down the bottle)
[x2 if Farrakhan is replaced with Jesse Jackson, x3 if he's replaced with Kanye West]

"So I guess Black people are perfect in every way?" (2 sips)

What's Not Being Said

Ta-Nehisi Coates is not the only one savaging a new study purporting to question whether the children of "gay parents" (very, very loosely defined -- see below) experience negative consequences (John Corvino shreds it in a very satisfying manner), but he gets extra points for stating something important in a more general sense: "Too often, people wave the flag of 'difficult truths' and 'un-PC' as though merely saying something unpopular is somehow a kind of thinking." It was something Coates also pointed out as a persistent weakness of Andrew Sullivan, and having just been informed by Johnny Argent about how "brave" Gilad Atzmon is for daring "to even question the value of Abrahamic brainwashing," it's worth reiterating.

Meanwhile, as to the study itself, I'm not an empiricist, so I have a simple rule of the thumb for appraising empirical studies. If I can spot the methodological flaws, then it's probably a pretty weak study. And here -- oh boy here -- do we have a doozy. Normally, when doing a study like this, you try to hold as many variables as possible constant. So if your control is the children of stable heterosexual couples, you compare them to the children of stable homosexual couples, and see what happens.

But here, the study takes on the one hand the children of "intact biological families", and pairs them against the children of anyone whose parents has ever had any same-sex sexual interaction, ever. Aside from the fact that this includes persons who remain in an intact biological family (capturing anything from a bout of college experimentation to a Ted Haggard-style drug-fueled prostitution binge), it by design doesn't standardize family settings -- it's an ideal heterosexual family paired against a cottage pie of gay (and not gay) life situations. That's the sort of gaping error that makes one wonder how this thing got past peer-review.

Everyday Citizens

The nation of Sweden tried an experiment with its official twitter feed: handing it off to a random Swede each week. Sounds like a fun, funky idea -- until one of them spent her week asking about those strange Jew-people she's heard so much about.



You know, say what you will about Americans, but we're smart enough to know in advance that a similar project with random American citizens would end in similar disaster.

Meanwhile, I am in agreement with those who say that the list of messages isn't hostile or anti-Semitic, just profoundly clueless. But still -- not exactly a shining moment. (Via WWPD).

LingleChannel

Money is important in election. You can use it to fund local offices which can door-knock to promote your candidacy. A little more and you can purchase television ads, to persuade voters via the power of vague testimonials and grainy footage of your opponent. A little more than that, and you can use it to purchase your own television network and just have them promote you 24/7:

Former Gov. Linda Lingle (R) today launched her own cable television channel, which is dedicated solely to providing information about her Senate campaign and the issues facing Hawaii.

LL2012 can be found on digital channel 110 for Oceanic Time Warner subscribers. According to the cable company, this is the first time a U.S. political candidate has used a dedicated cable channel, the campaign said.

I don't even know what to say. My first question is how much material can she even have to fill up an entire channel? My second question is what are we coming to as a nation?

Via DK Elections.

Pacquiao/Bradley: The Breakdown

A lot of nothing from me over the past few days (my mom came out to visit), so it's only fitting that silence with a post on topic you all love: boxing! Specifically, last night's Pacquiao/Bradley card.

Cards on the table time: I was watching with friends so I didn't formally score the fight. I thought Pacquiao won. Everyone watching with me thought Pacquiao won. But while I was watching I did not think it was the one-sided drubbing that HBO was making it out to be. And I recall six rounds (from memory they were 1, 5, and 9-12) where I thought to myself "I can see an argument for Bradley in that round." Does that mean I thought all of those rounds should have necessarily been scored for Bradley? Nope. Does it mean that I thought they were the only conceivable rounds one could have scored for Bradley? Not necessarily. But as I said, I still came out with the assumption and belief that Manny Pacquiao won the fight.

So what happened? Let's break down some possibilities. But before we begin, let's break down why it is we all think Pacquiao won the fight.

The case for Pacquiao

It's weird to have to defend a result that everyone thinks is correct. But it makes for a good starting point for looking at the Bradley apologias, and it's productive for me to run through in my head why I thought Pacquiao deserved the nod. So here it goes: The only punches of meaning were landing by Pacquiao (the straight left hand). He landed more punches and harder punches, generally a winning combination, while Bradley may not have landing a single meaningful punch all fight. While someone like Timothy Bradley is never going to stop trying, by the middle of the fight he did start to look desperate, coming in wild and winging shots. Pacquiao for the most part executed his game plan and got Bradley to fight his fight.

Nor was it the case that Pacquiao dazzled in some rounds but quietly gave away others. With the possible exception of the 11th, there was not a single round that Pacquiao didn't have a solid case for winning. One could plausibly argue that a Pacquiao shutout was more in range of what transpired than a Bradley decision.

Corruption

This is always close to the lips of irate boxing fans. I'm always skeptical, possibly out of naivete -- I'm not close to the dark underbelly of boxing to know what "really" happens down there, so I blissfully tell myself corruption is a thing of the past (I also think it's easy enough for various cognitive biases to generally slant outcomes towards favored fighters without having to resort to corruption).

The corruption claims right now are centered on three points: (1) Unconfirmed accounts that Pacquiao was thinking of leaving Top Rank, and this was Bob Arum's way of punishing him, (2) The idea that Pacquiao was aging out and Top Rank wanted to launch a new, younger, American star in Timothy Bradley, and (3) The belief that this sets up a lucrative rematch between the two -- especially important given that Pacquiao was running out of credible opponents not named "Mayweather" or "Marquez", neither of whom Arum wants to work with.

In terms of Arum's response itself, I don't give much weight either to his fulminations about the sport being disgraced in the post-fight presser, nor his all-smiles presentation when talking to Bradley after the fight. The latter could be just politeness (Arum's not going to get in the face and scream at his own fighter right after the decision about the injustice of it), and the former is just basic political self-preservation given the popular reaction to the fight.

As I said, I tend not to think corruption is in play. But people are talking about it, and that's never a good thing.

Count to seven

On the other extreme from corruption, the simplest explanation for the result is that the judges found 7 rounds that they thought Bradley won. One interesting thing I've observed in reading the reactions to the fight is that while essentially everyone is saying "there are 3, maybe 4 rounds one could give to Bradley tops", there is widespread disagreement on what those rounds are. In fact, I've seen almost every round in the fight cited by someone or another as a "possible" Bradley round (in the course, again, of denying the possibility that he won more than 4). So if there's an argument to be made for all those rounds, well, string seven such arguments together and you have a Bradley win.

Is that "good" judging? Not necessarily -- I think the sour taste in our mouths comes from the sense that one has to reach to give Bradley these rounds, and one should not over and over reach to give the same fighter rounds. But it's there in a way that doesn't necessarily imply abject incompetence.

Upward mobility

Do you know what this fight reminded me of most when I was watching it? Bradley/Lamont Peterson. In that fight, Lamont Peterson fought hard, and well, and never looked like he was being blown out of the ring or anything. It's just that Tim Bradley was consistently better, and so was handily winning the fight. It seemed like the sort of fight that was obviously a Bradley win, possibly by shutout, but one in which shutout scores wouldn't really do justice to the effort put forward by the losing fighter. And I think that's what I lot of folks thought about this fight -- a convincing Pacquiao victory, but one in which he had to work harder than lopsided cards might suggest.

Okay, now, put yourself in the heads of the judges. For the first half of the fight, they're basically thinking the same thing we are: Pacquiao is winning, but not utterly dominating -- it's not like Bradley is out of the fight. So in their heads (even if subconsciously), when close rounds come up they're leaning towards scoring the bout in a way that matches their general instinct of Pacquiao in control but not walking of his man -- up 5-1 or 4-2 (I'm not saying this good judging practice -- I'm trying to make a psychological explanation for what's going on). And halfway through the fight, all three judges had Pacquiao winning (59-55 and 58-56 twice). I think if those scores had been announced after round six, none of us would have been bursting a blood vessel over it -- we'd say "okay, they found two rounds to give to Bradley."

Then we get to the second half of the fight, in which Bradley fought much better, and (more importantly) each round was better for Bradley than the one before. Judges start to see he's coming on strong, push a round his way. The next round is even better for Bradley than the one before, so you got to give him that one too. And again. And again, all the way down the back stretch of the fight.

The fact is that Bradley dominated the cards over the second half the fight -- he won 5 of 6 rounds on two cards and 4 of 6 on the third. Did he really win all those rounds? No. But you give him the first couple of rounds because the fight "feels competitive", then the next few because they were better than the ones you already gave him, then the last couple that he legitimately did win -- and suddenly you're holding a Bradley decision.

Again, I'm not saying "and thus, Tim Bradley legitimately won the fight". I'm trying to break down what I think might have actually gone on in the heads of three very experienced judges to make the result the way it was. This last story is the one that I think is most likely, and note what drives it -- not corruption, not incompetence, but not "judge each round individually" either. It's a set of cognitive biases that here happened to work strongly in Tim Bradley's advantage. That doesn't make it fair or right -- it makes it something to be attentive to.

* * *

The rest of the night

* Was the Randall Bailey/Mike Jones fight a microcosm of Randall Bailey or what? He does nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing ... BOOM right hand floors Jones. Then Jones gets up to control most of the 11th, before BOOM right uppercut obliterates him. It was a stunning one-punch knockout and further solidifies the legend of Randall Bailey as one of the all-time most concussive punchers in the sport. It is unreal the amount of power he packs in that one hand.

* Bizarre ending to the Arce/Rojas fight deprived us of what was shaping up to be a barn-burner. While I am quite willing to call the ending "freakish" as Lampley did, one of my friends watching argued against by pointing out that "a bolt of lightning is freakish. This fight ended with Arce being punched in the face, which is well within the realm of what I expected." Okay, touche. And rematch please?

* Guillermo Rigondeaux is so insanely good. It's not that Teon Kennedy is anything special, because he's not, but still five knockdowns in five rounds is pretty amazing. But more than that is how easy Rigondeaux makes it look -- he just gives off the impression he can do whatever he wants in there. The knockdowns themselves are less about raw, Randall Bailey-esque power and more just perfect timing and precision -- I don't know if I've ever seen a more accurate puncher. And on the rare occasions that Kennedy was able to force an exchange, that accuracy didn't go away -- Rigondeaux is blessed with an ability (shared by Pacquiao and Marquez, among others) to throw hard, accurate shots consistently in the middle of what look from the outside to be wild exchanges. He is the real deal, and I hope he gets a fight against the division's elite because I want to see him against the best.

* Max Kellerman was pretty dickish in his interviews tonight. It was annoying. But one thing I give Kellerman credit for when he's in the booth is that he does sometimes, quietly, try to derail Jim Lampley from running wild with "the narrative of the fight". That's one of Lampley's great weaknesses as a broadcaster, and while I've never heard Kellerman successfully convince Lampley to change his mind mid-fight, it's good for the viewers that we have a voice giving an alternative take.

Mad CEI Men

The Competitive Enterprise Institute (perhaps best known for their pro-Carbon Dioxide ads -- tag: "They call it pollution. We call it life!" recently hosted a Mad Men themed fundraiser. The thesis is that Don Draper would be appalled by corporations always apologizing for this or that misdeed. Take BP. Sure they basically destroyed the Gulf of Mexico and nearly beset a flaming wall of alligators onto Louisiana. But that doesn't mean they should be apologetic. This is America, damn it!

As the writer notes, the CEI doesn't actually take Draper's mercurial spirit seriously enough, citing to his famous anti-tobacco letter that was as pure a business-oriented mea culpa as they come. Businesses run apologetic TV ads because, one presumes, they're better for business than the alternatives -- particularly for firms with unlovely reps. That's part of the market too -- sometimes, the market doesn't reward your testosterone fueled fantasies.

The Things You Can Do With a Shiny New Coalition

A recent dust-up in Israel comes in response to a Supreme Court decision demanding the evacuation of settlers in the Ulpina neighborhood, who built their homes on private Palestinian land. The settlers, of course, don't want to go, and there have been murmurings that the Israeli government would vote to retroactively legalize the settlement (which would put it on a collision course with the Supreme Court).

It seems like Netanyahu just put his foot down on that though: he's saying that any minister in his government who votes to legalize Ulpina will be fired. Two ministers (including one from Likud) have stated their intent to vote for it anyway, and I can't say I'll shed a tear if they depart.

So that's a good start to having a flexible, broad-based coalition. How about following up by evacuating some of the far-flung settlements that Israel knows it cannot keep?

Change Places!

Fascinating article on population shifts in Cleveland. Basically, it goes like this: Rust Belt cities have witnessed the hollowing out of the urban cores for decades now. This means that residential real estate in the city is dirt cheap. You know who loves cheap urban real estate? Young White people, who are flocking to the city as they can purchase houses at rock bottom prices that are very close to finally reflowering city neighborhoods.

Meanwhile, the collapse of the housing market in the suburbs has had its own effect on Black city residents -- they see this is their big shot to cash in on the American dream (nice house with a yard away from the city). So as we're seeing an influx of White couples into the city, we're seeing a transition of Black families out to the suburbs. The upshot? Far more integrated neighborhoods.

Dershowitz's Evolution Continues

A few weeks ago, I commented on Alan Dershowitz's experiences speaking at a "pro-Israel" gathering where attendees booed the President as well as members of Israel's security establishment whose views on Iran they found distasteful. Dershowitz was furious, but I noted that in a sense he was laying in a bed he had made -- it was Dershowitz, after all, who had supported Republican challenges to reliably pro-Israel Democrats like Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) for being too close to President Obama.

Still, his belated recognition that maybe he was backing the wrong pro-Israel horses is something to be encouraged. And we're seeing another step from Dershowitz as he takes to the Wall Street Journal to endorse (gasp) a settlement freeze. A settlement freeze! Signature element of President Obama's supposed apostasy. But now Dershowitz thinks it is a good idea, if done right (basically, paired with an immediate Palestinian return to the negotiating table, and lasting as long as they stay at the table). And he's right -- it is a good idea. But again, who exactly does he think will be his allies and who his saboteurs on this? He'll be backed up by the pro-Israel left and savaged by the right.

And once again, that leaves Professor Dershowitz with a choice regarding what he wants the future of pro-Israel to be. He can't straddle the line forever. He needs to take a breath, perhaps swallow his pride, and recognize who is and isn't his ally in the quest for rendering Israel a safe and secure Jewish democracy.

Quote of the Day: Liberalism and Neutrality

Liberalism need not be defined by neutrality, nor by an unchanging list of individual rights which always and everywhere trump collective goals.... What keeps a society liberal is not that it retreats from any pronouncements on what constitutes the good life, but that, in pursuing its own conception of the good, it none the less respects those who disagree. 'A society with strong collective goals can be liberal, on this view, provided it is also capable of respecting diversity, especially when it concerns those who do not share its goals; and provided it can offer adequate safeguards for fundamental rights.'

Anne Phillips, The Politics of Presence (Oxford UP 1995), pp. 133 (quoting Charles Taylor, "Shared and Divergent Values," in Ronald L. Watts & Douglas M Brown, eds., Options for a New Canada (Toronto UP, 1991), pp. 71).

Big Boxing Weekend Roundup

This weekend has a lot of great action. Not to mention game two of the Stanley Cup Finals.

* * *

I posted this on my Facebook wall, but it's good enough for a double-dip -- David Hirsh does a beautiful job discussing the BDS campaign's treatment of Jews parallel to Shylock as BDSers tried to sabotage an Israeli production of The Merchant of Venice.

Peter E. Gordon has a fascinating review of a book detailing the history of the Catholic Church's Nostra Aetate.

"Memes are ridiculous!", he said, while unironically citing a meme.

The latest reports are that Stuxnet was a joint American/Israeli project aimed at sabotaging Iranian nuclear capacity.

Nancy Leong asks if diversity is for White people. She's got a cool paper coming out in the Harvard Law Review arguing that the diversity rationale has the effect of commodifying non-White racial identity. She thinks that's a bad thing, I am more circumspect about it.

J.J. Goldberg looks at several Jewish polls (including the one I discussed yesterday), finds that they're all saying very similar things (to wit, Jews are very liberal).

Acid Attacks

In Afghanistan, one of the most horrifying elements of the Taliban's war on women is the use of acid attacks. Women who attend school, play sports, or otherwise behave in ways offensive to the Taliban's fundamentalist religious ethos are splashed with acid, causing excruciating pain and permanent disfiguration.

Most of us are appalled. But a spokesman for Rep. Nan Hayworth (R-NY) sees a metaphor. Posting on a local Democratic facebook page, Hayworth spokesman Jay Townsend said:

Let's hurl some acid at those female democratic [sic] Senators who won't abide the mandates they want to impose on the private sector.

Sickening.

Rep. Hayworth's office has not yet commented on the story.

Jews Are Liberal, Part Eleventy Billion

A new poll finds, once again, that Jews harbor opinions well to the left of the American mainstream on a host of issues. Nearly 70% favor gay marriage. Nearly 90% favor legal abortion in most cases.

And while it is sometimes asserted that Jewish social liberalism is balanced by economic moderation, that's only true as a matter of degree. Two-thirds support tax increases on persons making over $200,000/year, 62% feel that banks and financial institutions pose a "major threat", and 61% say they tend to favor unions over corporations when they hear about a strike (to be fair, when the corporations are run by guys like this, it's easy to root against them).

Oh, and on Israel/Palestine? No surprises there either. Jews tend to think Israel wants peace and Palestinians do not. But perhaps the most striking finding was their opinion regarding a settlement freeze. Though opinions were divided, a plurality of 40% believes that the Israel government should freeze settlements, versus only 22% opposed (39% are unsure).

Same-Sex Marriage as a Make-Up Call

As you may have heard, the 1st Circuit in an opinion by Judge Boudin just struck down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (defining marriage for purpose of federal law solely as existing between a man and a woman). Good commentary from Dale Carpenter and Ruthann Robson. Of course, everyone (1st Circuit included) expects this to be resolved by the Supreme Court.

And that got me to thinking. The swing vote, as always, is Justice Kennedy (though DOMA raises important federalism issues that theoretically sway some conservative justices -- well, just color me dubious on that). While Justice Kennedy has distinguished himself as a relatively friendly Justice for LGBT litigants -- writing important majority opinions in Romer v. Evans and Lawrence v. Texas -- there is of course no guarantee how he would vote on the motherlode issue of same-sex marriage. However, it strikes me as relevant that these issues are coming to a head around the same time as the PPACA litigation.

Why? Well, the fact that he's got two major historical decisions coming his way in relatively close succession gives him the chance to "split the baby". Let's say he votes to strike down the Affordable Care Act. Liberals are outraged. A year later, a same-sex marriage case comes to the Court, and he strikes down that law too. Suddenly, he's a liberal hero again. The same-sex marriage opinion gives him a chance to cleanse the prior vote -- making up for it and assuring himself that he's "centrist" and "middle of the road". The known prospect of a liberal-friendly SSM decision gives him the cognitive space to make a conservative-friendly decision on the ACA (or perhaps vice versa).

Of course, this is all vague speculation at this point. But part of my read on Justice Kennedy is he likes to regress to the mean. An anti-ACA decision would represent a major slide to the right -- it would not surprise me if he quickly tried to counterbalance it with a counterweight on the left.

It Takes Two

Recently, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has been floating a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank if peace talks stutter. Today, Palestinian officials firmly rejected that possibility, arguing that it would perpetuate the conflict and pose a barrier to a comprehensive and lasting solution to it.

There are plenty of things appealing about a unilateral withdrawal, and plenty of legitimate dangers (the Gaza experience illuminates both). But the Palestinians firm rejection of unilateral Israeli action is important, because it establishes that "ending the occupation" is not entirely in Israeli hands. It's not entirely in Palestinian hands either, of course. It's simply the fact that for a deal to happen, both sides are going to have to put the work in. Hence, any description of the conflict that puts the onus or blame entirely on one side is missing the point. Even the PA does not want this conflict solved via force of Israeli will alone.

Out of Many

Newt Gingrich renders his apologia for birtherism:

“I know that there is a desperate need to attach racism to everything but in fact I think that Donald Trump said what he said because it’s the right thing for him to say,” Gingrich said to reporters in the lobby of the Trump Hotel here. “I think that Obama creates very powerful emotions about him, largely because of the radicalism of his views. I think that's the key fact.”

Trump's widely discredited claims about Obama's birth certificate overshadowed GOP front-runner Mitt Romney's message on the economy last Thursday, yet Gingrich said that it’s a media-driven story.

“Nobody runs around saying whether Colonel [Allen] West was born in the United States. He's an African American you know. He's a congressman. Nobody runs around and says was Tim Scott born in the United States. He's a congressman. He's an African American,” he said. “So the idea of asserting that any charge against Obama somehow manages magically in the media to get back to racism, I think is just one more device to protect Obama.”

Ooh, ooh, let me play! "People keep saying lynching is about racism. But look at all the Black people who have never been lynched! Clearly, it's not about Black people, but about powerful emotions that surround the uppity ones, and when the media calls it 'racism', that's just another device to shield their radical agenda."

Seriously, though, it is interesting to watch the Republican establishment realize that it's not going to be able to contain birtherism. So it has to conduct rationales for it that excuse the misbehavior. If they had a zero-tolerance policy against birtherism, they'd lose half their base at this point.

Artur Davis' Turn for the Worse

Former Alabama Democratic Rep. Artur Davis has announced he is switching parties, though he has not committed to a renewed political career (if he did run, however, it would be in Virginia, not Alabama).

There's a lot of "good riddance" being put out there. And I certainly see where that comes from. But I find my feelings are mixed -- while I am deeply disappointed in the man Rep. Davis has become, I also recall the fall from what he once was.

At one point, Davis was considered a rising star amongst young African-American politicians. And while he had already spent several term in Congress (knocking off incumbent Democrat Earl Hilliard to get there)*, it was the 2010 Alabama gubernatorial race that looked to be his coming out party. Young, smart, and Harvard-educated, Davis cut a character that folks thought might have cross-over appeal and could bite into the overwhelming margins White voters were providing to Republican candidates statewide -- a Barack Obama for the south.

But therein lay the problem: Davis looked ahead to the general election and took his base for granted. He tacked hard to the right, assuming that the Black voters who made the core of Alabama's Democratic activists would continue to support him -- particularly given that his main opponent was the White Agricultural Commissioner Ron Sparks. He voted against the Affordable Care Act and spurned the local Black leadership. And come election day, he was not just beaten but throttled by Sparks, who took home over 60% of the vote. Rep. Davis had made an elementary mistake -- he assumed that Black voters vote on basis of race, not policy. And his rising star came crashing to earth.

After that defeat, Davis turned hard against the Democratic Party, and his recent moves reek of sour grapes. The breaking point was his endorsement of the voter fraud panic, a "problem" that is by all empirical accounts mostly non-existent but has been an effective pretext for purging the rolls of valid voters, many people of color.

The thing is, I saw Rep. Davis in Congress, and I remember being extraordinarily impressed by his savvy and intelligence. Artur Davis is a smart man, and that's what makes his decision so infuriating. He's smart enough to know that "voter fraud" is a fraud, but he's also smart enough to know that jumping on that train is a fast way to leap to prominence amongst the GOP, who are always looking for Black faces to say what White audiences want to hear.

The tragedy is that someone as smart and talented as Davis is deciding to use his talents like this -- trying to exploit the game to put himself in power, rather than to do good for the nation. People say good riddance, and in a sense they're right to -- someone who sells out like this does not deserve our respect. But I can't help but feel a twinge of regret. Artur Davis' story could have had so many endings. It's a shame he chose this one.

* I distinctly remember the Davis/Hilliard race because Hilliard had issued several anti-Israel votes (as well as a solidarity trip to Libya), which put him on the radar screen of the pro-Israel and Jewish Democratic community. Davis received strong support in the Jewish community at the start of his career (people say he received money from AIPAC, but that's strictly speaking inaccurate -- AIPAC doesn't have a political action committee and does not give money to candidates. It is true that he received strong support from various Jewish and pro-Israel groups -- both Davis and Hilliard received most of their large donations from out-of-state as the race began to be seen as a referendum on mid-east policy), and I think many of us had warm feelings towards him as someone who was responsive to us when we were feeling hurt or aggrieved. Again, that makes it more difficult when you see what he's receded into.

But in a sense, Hilliard's defeat (like Cynthia McKinney's similar defeats in Georgia) wasn't about who ran against him, but about the voters who made a decision to listen. The Jewish community said to them "your representative is hurting us", and they responded. Every minority group should be so lucky as to have their claims of hurt be met with empathy like that. I try to be empathic in the same way to others, so that when I'm a position where my community is alleged to be causing a hurt, I do my best to be responsive as well. So, no matter how Congressman Davis' career ends, Jewish voters owe a debt of gratitude to the voters of the Alabama 7th District surrounding how it began.

What Exactly Did the UNWTO Do?

This Guardian story is claiming that a UN body has made Zimbabwean autocrat Robert Mugabe into a "leader for tourism". Such an honorific sounds like a terrible idea, and indeed, human rights groups and opposition members of Zimbabwe's besieged civil society are outraged, while supporters of Mugabe's ZANU-PF party are crowing. So I'm all set to be outraged.

But then at the very end of the article is a statement by the relevant UN body denying that it had appointed Mugabe to anything. The UNWTO instead issued an "open letter" to heads of states asking them to be "leaders for tourism". That letter "mplies no legal commitment or title attribution to the country or the head of state or government in question."

Now this doesn't quite settle things either -- it is unclear whether this letter was sent to every head of state, or just ones specifically selected by the UNWTO, and if the latter, how the selection process proceeded. But it seems at least possible that this really isn't any sort of official honoring of Mugabe by the UN, and I found the Guardian article particularly unhelpful in illuminating what, exactly, is going on here.

Watch Dogs

Will Smith is raising his daughter to take ownership of her body. Stuyvesant High School is teaching its female charges that powerful men are always watching and leering at teenage women who should be ashamed of their dirty, slutty bodies. I have little else to say except the women they talk to are very impressive in articulating the problems with the high school's enforcement of its dress code, and Phoebe -- as an alum of the school -- has an excellent perspective of her own.

In marginally related news, I was all set to archly ask: if participants in the sport of pole dancing are so concerned about shedding their activity's racy reputation, why are they all in bikinis? But to my impressed surprise, one of the women had an answer, and it wasn't "so people pay attention to us" (it was that they need exposed skin to stick to the poles for some of their tricks).

Owning It

Will Smith talks about letting his daughter cut her own hair:

"We let Willow cut her hair. When you have a little girl, it's like how can you teach her that you're in control of her body? If I teach her that I'm in charge of whether or not she can touch her hair, she's going to replace me with some other man when she goes out in the world. She can't cut my hair but that's her hair. She has got to have command of her body. So when she goes out into the world, she's going out with a command that is hers. She is used to making those decisions herself. We try to keep giving them those decisions until they can hold the full weight of their lives."

Awesome.

Cognitive Democracy (Farrell & Shalizi)

This draft paper by Henry Farrell and Cosma Rohilla Shalizi looks like an absolutely fascinating project. Basically, it argues that in certain circumstances, democratic deicsion-making is a superior way of solving large-scale problems than its two primary competitors (markets and hierarchies). The argument builds on research exploring the importance of diversity in decision-making groups (one interesting paper they rely on is Lu Hong & Scott E. Page, Groups of diverse problem solvers can outperform groups of high-ability problem solvers, 101 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 16385 (2004)), including the provocative claim that "diversity trumps ability".

In brief (and probably missing a ton of subtlety), all of us come at problems with different perspectives, which channel our ability to spot certain solutions to problems while missing others. People who are very much alike will tend to see similar solutions. Diverse groups see a greater breadth of solutions and thus are more likely to find the optimal one. Hong and Page present a model demonstrating that, for large groups in which there is a distribution of ability but all members are competent, it is better for decisions to be made by a random sample X of group members than by the X top performers (hence, diversity trumps ability -- or as William Buckley might put it, a society is better governed by the first 400 people in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty).

Farrell and Shalizi argue that democracy simulates these conditions by putting decision-making in the hands of a broad, diverse cross-section of the community who are situated in a state of at least partial deliberation with one another. While this deliberation is not going to be at the idealistic level hoped for by deliberative democrats, it is enough such that the decision-makers will be aware of proposals and solutions made by others and can selectively (or even surreptitiously) incorporate them into their own plans.

I'm not doing the project justice, though, and I highly encourage you to read the linked draft. It looks like the start of a superb piece of work.

Mayor Franks

Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) recently introduced a bill to severely limit abortion in DC. DC voters -- already perturbed at the fact that people-not-them were getting to pass DC-specific legislation -- got another slap in the face when Rep. Franks wouldn't let DC's non-voting Delegate (Eleanor Holmes Norton) testify at his hearing. To be fair, from a Republican standpoint this makes sense -- Rep. Franks wants to make sure that only relevant voices enter into the debate, and Delegate Norton, as a Black woman from DC, is a veritable trifecta of irrelevant. Letting localities govern their own affairs is for White people.

In any event, though they never voted for him (and aren't allowed to vote for anyone with a vote that counts), DC voters are willing to accept a new sheriff in town. Which is why they've begun enundating "Mayor Franks" with requests to resolve all their local travails -- from parking tickets to potholes. Since he's taken such an interest in governing the city, you know.

Rep. Franks, of course, is baffled. DC residents "are missing the point", if they think a law proposed in a body they're not allowed to vote in, by a legislator who won't even allow their non-voting delegate to testify, that solely governs their lives, is about them. "It's the pain of the child." You know, one of those real people I've heard so much about.

Tempers Fugit

Over the past few days, we've seen a hard push back from the right against the notion that a ruling by the Supreme Court overturning the Affordable Care Act would severely damage the court's legitimacy. Indeed, they say, it is that very insinuation from the left that is problematic -- it would have the Court bow before a pressure campaign in opposition to what they think is the correct constitutional ruling. By definition, any consideration of these "legitimacy" concerns is inherently illegitimate -- as Ilya Somin puts it, it would have the Court "engage in genuinely political decision-making in order to avoid the mere appearance of it."

But I think this outlook doesn't really account for the argument the left is making and how they think -- not without justification -- that an anti-ACA ruling would be purely the result of politics, not law. From a liberal vantage point, the reason it is so hard to take the anti-ACA argument seriously as a matter of principle is simple: The structure of the ACA was originally a Republican innovation, the GOP's answer to Hillarycare, most associated with Mitt Romney. At that point in time, its constitutionality was not remotely controversial. The only things that have changed from now until then are (a) it became a Democratic plan rather than a Republican plan and (b) Republicans have staged a multi-year temper tantrum declaring it (much like everything else the Obama administration does) as a reincarnation of the Khrushchev administration. Given that, it is a very plausible belief that those factors (that it is an identifiably Democratic plan, and that Republicans have thrown a massive hissy fit about it) are the key variables in transitioning the anti-mandate argument from "off the wall" to "on the wall".

Consequently, in making the legitimacy arguments, liberals are trying to have a debiasing effect -- in essence, telling the Court that "were this not a flagship liberal law bitterly opposed by Republicans, you would not find this even remotely controversial. To the extent that you think this is even a live issue, it is likely a result of the underlying political currents, not legal argumentation." To be sure, I'm not arguing that someone like Randy Barnett only thinks the ACA is unconstitutional because its a high-profile Democratic agenda item which Republicans oppose. I am saying that were it for not those things, Randy Barnett would be another Richard Epstein -- a very smart guy whose opinions on the Constitution rarely enter the same time zone as mainstream legal practice. Randy Barnett's opinions are genuine, but they're only mainstream because he's riding a wave of Republican fury which is entirely political.

To buttress this point, imagine an alternative history.

It's early fall of 2008. The McCain campaign is floundering, and the selection of Sarah Palin as VP is widely seen as a disaster. Privately, Republicans have already written off the 2008 election. Moreover, while Democrats already control the House and Senate, it looks like they will entrench those gains even more on Obama's coattails. At this point, the order of the day is damage control.

Congressional Republicans confer. They know that one important Democratic policy priority is universal health care. With a huge mandate and swollen majorities, Republicans are worried that Democrats will be able to push forward the plan of their choice -- government-run, single payer health care. In addition to ideological opposition, Republicans are worried that this will give Democrats ownership over yet another flagship governmental program.

So they decide to get out in front of the issue. Congressional Republicans decide to put forward their own plan, modeled on Romneycare, with an individual mandate to buy private health insurance. Democratic leaders are surprised and taken aback, but are willing to negotiate. After all, the plan isn't that different from that put forward by the Obama campaign. More to the point, many Democrats have bitter memories of the 1990s health care fight, and do not care to die on the same hill twice in one go around. With a slumping economy, many Democrats would rather Obama be able to focus his political capital on stimulus and other job-creating measures, and don't want him to get bogged down in what could be an endless and resource-draining health care fight.

Of course, plenty of Democrats want to hold out for single-payer, and plenty of Republicans are opposed to any further government involvement in health care at all. Still, a moderate middle position manages to gain a working majority. And so, with minor tweaks, a law substantially similar to the ACA passes Congress with bipartisan support (albeit with opposition on both flanks).

If the ACA had been passed this way -- not with universal acclaim, but also not with partisan acrimony, and not associated as the main accomplishment of a politician Republicans had sworn to destroy, does the ACA get struck down? No. Does it come close to being struck down? No again. Indeed, I daresay it would not have even reached the Supreme Court. Of course some would still make arguments that the ACA was unconstitutional, but their views would be relegated to obscure corners of academia and libertarian think tanks (I don't mean this as an insult -- I sit in an obscure corner of academia, after all). In the courts and in the mainstream, the mandate would be viewed the same way it was viewed in the 1990s -- an easy case, raising no particularly controversial points of commerce clause jurisprudence and not capturing either the public or legal imagination.

And so we come back to my key thesis -- this case is only a "serious" case because of politics. Conservative Justices who are thinking about striking down the law should be rightfully made aware of the possibility, if not the likelihood, that their beliefs about the constitutionality of the ACA are being influenced in large part by these underlying political currents, and they should think quite critically about the degree to which their intuition that the law is unconstitutional is purely a "legal" one, or is subtly, unconsciously influenced by their surrounding political milieu. And the law is struck down, given the causal story I'm putting forward, I think liberals will be quite justified in believing that the decision is political -- not in the sense that conservative justices are self-consciously serving the interests of the GOP, but in the sense that the understanding of the constitution's requirements shifted almost entirely due to changes in substantive political positions, rather than "principled" beliefs about the scope of the commerce clause.

Now, I'm talking a lot about debiasing here -- this idea that we should make conservative Justices aware of the possibility, if not the likelihood, that they would not be seriously entertaining striking down this law were it not for the underlying political flow of the issue. Which of course raises the question -- shouldn't liberal Justices ask themselves the same question? And the answer is: yes, of course. But it's also relatively easily answered -- liberal judges tend to have an expansive view of commerce clause powers across the board. They aren't any more likely to strike down "conservative" laws which allegedly exceed commerce clause boundaries (see Raich). Had Republicans won the day in the 1990s and gotten their health care proposal passed, it would not have gotten any negative votes from the liberal justices. There might be other cases where liberal justices have to be more alert to the potential of political bias, but this doesn't seem like one of them.

Finally, with regard to the "actual" legitimizing or delegitimizing impact of the Court's decision. I have no idea what the reaction of the public will be to an anti-ACA ruling. It is true that polls demonstrate that most Americans dislike the ACA and think it's unconstitutional (though, of course, most Americans aren't trained lawyers and have no idea what makes something constitutional or not). On the other hand, most polls also demonstrate that most Americans like the individual provisions of the ACA. More to the point, public opinion is a fickle thing. It's been pushed to the right on this issue by loud and uncompromising conservative declarations that the ACA is a new Marxism. Paired against tepid defenses from the left, the right's greater passion gives the impression that they have the better of the argument.

An anti-ACA opinion will undoubtedly cause an explosion of anger from the left, and it will be interesting to see how the public reacts to that. If there is one thing that has been demonstrated over the past few years, it's that if a large group of people can be mad enough and loud enough for long enough, they can do a surprisingly good job of rallying the center. It's part of the reason why we're seeing such stark political polarization, and I don't think it's a good thing, but it's also a spiral I'm not sure we can escape from.

The Journey of a Thousand Miles....

Well, well. A member of a mainstream American Jewish institution (the AJC) has finally denounced right-wing calls for a one-state solution. Well, obliquely anyway -- it was a general denunciation of the idea, "whether proposed by supporters of the Palestinian cause or by supporters of Israel." And it was made in Doha, Qatar, approximately 7,000 miles from Washington, D.C., where House Republicans have begun pushing the agenda.

But still, even a tiny, cautious baby step is a step. So hurray! Perhaps next we'll see such a condemnation in the same time zone as one of the Republicans calling for it -- or even, maybe, one that mentions one of them by name.

It's So Random

You know, I was never the best statistics student. Math's just not my area. But I have enough basic competency so I would never be stupid enough to think a large, non-random internet poll is more accurate than a smaller, random-sample scientific poll. Which, unfortunately, is more than we can say for Rep. Daniel Webster (R-FL).


Webster is pressing to eliminate the American Community Survey (a critical part of the Census), in part because it is "too intrusive", in part because it's "non-scientific". Why is it non-scientific? Because, to quote Webster, it's "random"! The New York Times can barely keep it together as it proceeds to inform its readers "[i]n fact, the randomness of the survey is precisely what makes the survey scientific, statistical experts say."

Random sampling is what makes the survey world go round. It is the only way to cost-effectively gather data about large groups of people given the impracticability of querying all of them. This is Statistics 101.